EthHub Weekly #126

Medalla testnet live, Set v2 announced, Personal Token Agency announced, Hermez introduced and much more!

Aug 10, 2020

Curated by Anthony Sassano (@sassal0x) and Eric Conner (@econoar)

[Sponsored] Zapper.fi helps you manage all your DeFi assets from one simple interface and has become the ultimate tool for yield farmers. By leveraging the composability of open finance, Zaps deploys capital to the most innovative opportunities in DeFi in one transaction - saving you time & gas.

Zapper.fi is the easiest way to discover and access new opportunities in DeFi as the platform is integrated with 19 DeFi platforms including Uniswap, Compound, Balancer, Maker and more. Zapper.fi also supports all of your favorite wallets including MetaMask, Portis, Trust Wallet and more. Check out this friendly video guide from DeFi Dad to learn more.

👨‍🌾 Stay Up To Date on Yield Farming

Our good friends over at DeFi Pulse have launched a brand new newsletter called ‘DeFi Pulse Farmer’. In this newsletter, you’ll find weekly trends on the latest yield farming opportunities along with an overview on the top stories in DeFi. I highly recommend subscribing here!

The Randomness Summit was announced by ETHGlobal this week which is a one day conference on August 13th for Randomness Beacon research and deployments - you can register for it here.

Have a great week everyone!

- Anthony

News of the Week

💸 PayPal to Reportedly Offer Crypto Trading Through Paxos Partnership

Digital payments giant PayPal reportedly plans to facilitate cryptocurrency trading through a new partnership with stablecoin operator Paxos. Industry news outlet Coindesk reported on Monday that PayPal plans to introduce crypto trading through Paxos’ new brokerage service.

The report follows the July 15 announcement of Paxos’ launch of a crypto brokerage that enables other firms to integrate crypto trading functionalities. The service can be used through a simple application programming interface integration and also manages regulatory compliance. According to Coindesk, PayPal will use this new service to deliver its crypto trading features.

⚖️ US Lawmakers Don’t Want Proof-of-Stake Networks to Get Overtaxed

Crypto holders earning new tokens by staking their coins might be at risk of being overtaxed, believe several members of Congress.

Four lawmakers wrote a letter to the Internal Revenue Service Wednesday, asking the U.S. tax agency to ensure stakers don’t face tax liabilities for receiving block rewards before they sell their new tokens.

“It is possible the taxation of ‘staking’ rewards as income may overstate taxpayers’ actual gains from participating in this new technology,” the letter said. “It could also result in a reporting and compliance nightmare, for taxpayers and the Service alike.”

The caucus clarified staking rewards should be taxed appropriately. “We believe that taxpayers’ true gains from these tokens should indeed be taxed,” the letter said.

Abraham Sutherland, a lecturer at the University of Virginia, told CoinDesk these concerns include the fact that staking protocols could create new blocks – and therefore, release new tokens – every few minutes, hours or days. Each of these blocks could be treated as an independent taxable event, meaning taxpayers could potentially have hundreds of taxable events every year, which would be a headache for both the taxpayer and the IRS to assess, he said.

Project Updates

What’s New in Eth2 - 8 August 2020

An overview of the recent Medalla testnet launch, the attacknets, BLS news and much more from Ben in his weekly eth2 update.

Eth 2.0 Dev Update #55 —Medalla Testnet

Recap of the Medalla testnet launch, the usual developer updates, an announcement of a new team member joining the PryLabs team, upcoming work and more.

Development Update #4 – ethereum.org

Fresh illustrations, new page designs, a new framework for the website, ethereum.org now available in 30 languages and more in this development update.

Eth2 Quick Update #14

A summary of the Medalla launch (bit dated now) and an update on the eth2 attacknet launch in this quick update from Danny Ryan.

yEarn yDAO Summoned

yDAO is a new DAO for the yEarn platform created by DAOhaus. It will be used to fund value-added contributions to the yEarn ecosystem, is open for anyone to request funding for yEarn related tasks, is focused solely on funding projects, not on protocol-level governance and more.

Introducing Set V2

Set V2 is a major upgrade coming to Set Protocol that will include new features such as multi-asset support, yield farming support, gas cost savings and more.

First Credit Delegation on Aave

Aave announced that DeversiFi, a decentralized exchange, was the first one to experiment with Credit Delegation by drawing a credit line from a Credit Delegation Vault.

yBorrow Launched

yBorrow allows LPs to create vaults and assign credit via Aave from which borrowers can draw their credit line. Credit delegation supports smart contract to smart contract. You can delegate to a yVault and farm yield with the borrowing asset you prefer.

DeFi Saver Launches Aave Dashboard

This new interface allows users to manage their Aave portfolio, boost & repay their positions in 1 transaction and full automation support is coming soon.

Introducing yDai

yDai is the first product built using the Yield Protocol. yDai will allow fixed-rate, fixed-term borrowing and lending of Dai, and will reveal the Dai yield curve.

Introducing the Personal Token Agency

The Personal Token Agency is a project spun up by Cooper Turley that aims to be the first talent agency for personal token creators. The agency is being set up to establish best practices around personal tokens.

GridPlus Update: August 7th 2020

This past month the Grid+ team shipped Lattice1s to Ethereum developers and testers, external devs have had Prysmatic Labs’ eth2 validator client running on the device, the pace of GRID redemption by energy customers accelerated, ENS support has been integrated into their web wallet, and their CTO Alex Miller’s MetaMask fork including Lattice1 support has been tested and is functioning smoothly.